Monday, January 31, 2011

31 January 2011. "Ojos limpios como el chingolo..." Eyes as clear as those of a sparrow. A line from a song by José Larralde, La Noche del Peludero...

The chingolo--a small bird, zonotrichia capensis--capensis originally referring to an African origin, on the Cape of Good Hope--which appears to have been a mistranscription of Cayena, the capital of French Guyana, the p replacing the y...and a birthplace in the Americas...

The head of the chingolo is gray, with prominent black stripe, and a smaller bonnet of gray. The throat is white, with a collar "de color canela..." Cinnamon. The back, brownish, with patches of black. The chest is brown, "con reflejos de pardo..." "A combination of colors and shapes that make it a very pleasing creature..."

The local names for the chingolo vary from province to province. Ycancho in the north of Argentina; cachilo in the east. Chuschiú in Córdoba. Vichi in Tucumán. Marumbé in the language of the Guaraní. Kiken in Tehuelche. And in Mapuche, chincol...

Friday, January 28, 2011

Gathered around small table, warm room...yerba mate, Cruz de Malta, a golden-brown gourd with silver rim, large in size, filled with dusky herb. Bombilla--bright metal--set in along the side, water near boiling. Fogón, a camp fire on the pampa--the word itself indigenous in origen, from the language of the Indians of the Andes...Quechua, meaning "llanura"--an open plain. More "empty" really--an expanse of land where the sun sets over a long horizon. "...ve morir el sol allá, detras de los juncos..." You see it die, there, beyond the reeds...

Thursday, January 27, 2011

El gaucho pintor. Note the brushes tucked in behind. Facón? Forget it. Not this time around. More Pan Apolek... An understanding of nature through the nature of a face, a gesture, "the turn of a back..."

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Friday, January 21, 2011

21 January 2011. Battersea Bridge, Tower of London, local lament. Border of despair--for no good reason. Or for the best of reasons. A genuine wander--"it was no wonder"--to redeem beyond the realm of fragments, the writing of lists, recordings of the names of things known. As with the horse of the Argentine. Pelajes de caballo...the coats of horses. Coats, as in "a covering which offers warmth"--or is it protection--or simply a sense of difference? Beauty? Names become a kind of incantation--magic--the way the sound reflects (embodies) a world. A delight. But can it be shared? Translation--somewhere between insult and total damage. Not quite that bad--except that all is lost, all is lost...

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

No los conozco. That's how it is, strange tilt of a hat, hem of a dress. Familiar, yet impossibly different. Imposiblement distintos... Reachable in language--the glide of each word. "You sound like an Italian," observation on the part of Marcos. As opposed to a resident of Oaxaca? Well, yes--an Italian. Italiano. That immigrant lilt, transferred slowly, by ship, to the horizon of the River Plate, Río La Plata. Color of lion--color de león--Lugones' phrase. Everyone quotes him--and rightly so...

A gift, bound in rough calfskin--small volume of Martín Fierro. This from mis compañeros in the Colegio Nacional. Quinto 3ra, the year 1962. Their names, too, signed one by one. Dip and flourish--muy argentino...

Saturday, January 15, 2011

14 January 2011. Pilchas gauchas, on a sunny morning. Orlando Vera Cruz, song of instruction and lament. Admonition, but from a position of the seeming inferior. His own view, of course--not in the least so. A matter of pride--knowledge as well... Un tipo del campo, a type, in the mimetic sense--Erich Auerbach, "Odysseus' Scar," read many years ago. The way in which a culture--that is to say, an entire view of the world--becomes manifest in word, langauge, story...song. Not such an unusual view, perhaps--we live this each day--but formulated here--brought together--by Auerbach in his exile during the war, a refugee in Istanbul--sans library, or notes, he wrote the entire book (Mimesis) from the primary sources themselves...

Older woman just now, in 7-eleven window. Oddly blond hair, small glasses propped on her nose, standing in the light, bending over to scratch free the marks on a lottery ticket... Habit and hope...

Thursday, January 13, 2011

13 January 2011. Modus rainus. Light gray mist, shifting to something more constant, then back again.

Torn between the Russians and the Argentines. Ancient slavic lands--rivers flowing south from the middle of a continent--Dnieper, Volga--and the peoples who live alongside them, older tribes, clans--predki--ancestors (russkie, ukraintsy, belorusy)... The authority of language--or is it just the words themselves--names and such. Spoken, heard, recognized, remembered...

Monday, January 10, 2011

Russian lessons, with misspellings. Misspelling lessons, with some Russian. Book from teacher at Columbia--Leon Stillman--Graded Readings in Russian History. Chteniya po russkoj istorii. New York and Oxford, 1960 and 1990. Walter Benjamin--the only true things one can say about the universe being the place and date of the publication of books.

Benjamin. Thoughts of Kitaj. Photos of him, later years, a refugee in LA. Incongruous, after his "long period of impunity"--the London years. Dark rooms with shelves lined with books. Not quite like the Russian shelves lined with books, though. There in the background in so many photos. Homey shelves, more than scholarly. Books as a life.

Last night, late--War and Peace. Desciption of Nikolai Rostov, later in life. Lisiye Gory. Princess Marya, their three children. His library--in winter. I prochital kazhduyu knigu--and he read each book to conclusion...

* * *

Kitaj quoting Robert Lowell: "Nothing is more respectable than a long period of impunity"

As with the Seurat sketch--in oil--Pauvis de Chavannes' Fisherman--a single figure, alone in a boat, the canvas itself, pictured among the reeds, shifting light, dappled greens...small moment of mystery, a living touch...

Thursday, January 06, 2011

Young woman and her mother, seated alongsided, from some far place--Middle East, Iran... Voices in another tongue...

As with Rambal, the French soldier who makes his way to the Russian camp, in the night...through heavy snow. Gathered around the kostyor--Russian for bonfire--they offer him vodka, kasha gruel... So many, lost, from both sides... "Moyi druzya, moyi druzya..." "My friends, my friends..."

About Me

The painter Anthony Dubovsky was born in San Diego, California, in 1945. He studied with Willard Midgette at Reed College, and has lived in Warsaw, Amsterdam, Buenos Aires, and Jerusalem. "An exploration in which the goal becomes a part of the discovery..." You can reach him at anthonydubovsky.com